Puzzle of the Day

Dave SchulerFebruary 8, 2013

What in the world is going on in Southern California? As best as I can tell from the reports on the Christopher Dorner story a guy who was discharged several years ago from the Los Angeles Police Department is being pursued very aggressively by the Los Angeles Police Department. The guy made some very inflammatory statements about the LAPD. Somebody killed somebody else. Could somebody explain it to me? Preferably, separating what’s known from the press releases, slants, and spin. I’d really like to know. Is this guy going around killing people? Is it a police rampage? What?

jan, you can only give what you have in excess. You CAN give the shirt off your back. But if it is the only shirt you’ve got, you can only do it once.

Lots of us have run out of reserves of everything good and decent and worthwhile. What little kindness and charity and understanding I have left are reserved solely for family and friends. And those circles have been drawn much closer in the last few years. The only things I’ve got left in abundance are fear, and anger, and hate. And I’m more than willing to give those away freely. I’ve only got two threads holding me in check. I know many in that same boat. I know some that have been cut loose entirely. They’re older than I am, though, and have an extra 15 years or so of having the passions of youth cool in their hearts, and an extra 15 years or so of ruts carved into their daily existence. That’s what’s kept the more capable people from going on spree killings, I’m convinced of that. Age and habit.

And the young ones don’t really know what’s being taken from them, and don’t have much in the way of capabilities or capacities to begin with. Too callow. Youth and ignorance.

Dorner is in a sweet spot, though. His life is ruined, he’s old enough to know it, and young enough to burn with it. He says all he wants is a Pyrrhic or Cadmean victory. When that’s all someone has left…. Vigor and ability and nothing left to lose. The results are predictable, are they not?

@Steve V, he said that Take Five is the greatest piece of music ever. Its not even the greatest jazz ever, let alone the greatest jazz of its time; that would be Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. The whole manifesto is a crude exercise in manipulation for the Jesse James set.

@icepick, I’ll have to read the thing closer than I frankly want to, but a lot of times I observe that people’s natural tendency is to be a hero in their own life story. I think that’s kind of kewl and all; I like to think I have my own moments, but the most heroic claims appear quixotesque — the certainty of the righteousness of their cause takes on a reality of its own.

I observe that people’s natural tendency is to be a hero in their own life story. I think that’s kind of kewl and all; I like to think I have my own moments, but the most heroic claims appear quixotesque — the certainty of the righteousness of their cause takes on a reality of its own.

As we are the captains of our own destiny, the directors of our life drama, then it’s only natural that we create a life story fitting our own perimeters and realities — especially if you are more of a loner and live in your head, as this guy must have done, at least for the last 4 years or so.

Right or wrong, though, he certainly has captured the public’s attention, and has the ear of the police department.

I love you people playing at police paranoia. Have any of you ever actually dealt with cops? Anyone been in jail? Any of you actually been the victim of a serious crime? I’ve been on both sides with cops. The fact is they behaved very professionally in all situations. I agree that the police have been overly militarized as a consequence of the drug war. That’s a valid criticism. Going from that to suggestions that this murdering lunatic is a victim? Bullshit.

I am quite familiar with cops on both sides and with prison on both sides. There is a big difference between a big city jail (Cook County, L.A. County, Orleans Parish Prison) and a small town. Also, there is a big difference between how folks in rich and poor areas are treated. The San Diego lockup is vastly different from Orleans Parish Prison. I can recommend the former, but the latter is best avoided.

If you were as disrespectful on the inside as you are on the outside, I suspect you were wearing somebody’s shower shoes with their name sewn on them.

I have never been a victim of a violent crime, but I think that has more to do with my attitude and hypervigilance. I am not a bad-ass, but I give off a vibe that I am more trouble than I am worth. I am able to pick up on this in other people, but apparently, not everybody is able to. It must be a “street thing”.

(NOTE: I have had my share of fights. I have won more than lost, but I have gotten a severe ass-kicked more than once.)

I also have a keen sense of trouble. The girl that knocked on my door at 2am may have really needed to call a cab, or her boyfriend could have been hiding. If so, the visible .45 in my hand prevented me from being a victim. I can give you many more examples.

If all the cops you have encountered have “behaved very professionally in all situations”, you were not in the rougher areas, or it was a long time ago. I would suggest you try living in or by a rough area. I am sure somebody familiar with NYC could recommend somewhere. I think you are close to Oakland, and I know there are some rough areas. I am not anti-cop. I am anti-incompetent cop, and there are too many of these.

“Back in the day”, a cop could tell the difference between a real thug and a wanna-be. It goes back to the vibe thing. You need to be able to read people. If you cannot tell the difference between a 71 year old hispanic woman and a very large black man, you are going to be shooting a lot of innocent people. A thug knows an ass beating is part of the game, but you do not disrespect them.

There are police departments and units that are thoroughly corrupt. The cops provide protection for the gangs running drugs, and some have gone into the business themselves. When one police officer murders another, you have a problem, and you can expect witnesses to be killed.

Many cops have a similar commando mentality that @Dave Schuler has written about. The have seen one too many movie, and they want to look like a bad-ass.

I have lived and played in some of the rougher areas, but I was there by choice. I do know what @Icepick is describing, but this was before helicopters became popular. This guy may be bat-shit crazy, but his story could have merit. People more knowledgeable about present day L.A. understand his complaint, but this is not proof.

I am inclined to believe the police are shooting people as a result of their everyday incompetence. I do not want to think the government is intentionally harming its citizens, and then I remember Tuskegee.

I liked your honestly-stated perspective. It seems to me that people who don’t like to question government largess, are also more inclined to positively generalize and exude about other appendages of government, such as a police force.

Questioning those who protect us, heal us, govern us is all a part of being a member of an empowered, well-informed society, one encouraging rather than muzzling free expressive criticism. This reminds me of the remarks delivered by Dr. Benjamin Carson @ The National Prayer Meeting, which has now gone viral on the Internet. It was a refreshing pleasure to hear someone discarding PC-speak, choosing instead to employ a reasonable, open, apolitical dialogue about the problems facing this country, absent any cow towing to the 4th branch of government he defined as “Special Interest Groups.”

Any person of color who gets up in front of more than 3 people and says he doesnt like PC (who does?) becomes a GOP favorite. Wanna bet he gets offers to run for office?

I agree, Steve, who does like PC languaging? As for creating a stir in being potential candidate material, the knee-jerk response has been, “Why doesn’t this guy run for office?” Basically, what people are yearning for in a leader is an untainted, honest person, beholding to no one and seeking only the highest good for all the people in this country.

There is no evidence that HSAs will decrease spending. I have looked. I think tithing is a great way to run a church. (Well actually, not really, but that would take too long for me to spell out. We limit our church donations to half that and put the rest elsewhere.) To run a govt? We really dont need a guy who doesnt believe in evolution or who knows what other science.

I’ll have to read the thing closer than I frankly want to, but a lot of times I observe that people’s natural tendency is to be a hero in their own life story.

Don’t bother. He definitely makes himself out to be the hero, and misses that some of his responses make him come off unhinged. Frankly, given what HE reports about his early days on the force, it makes one question what the Hell the LAPD was doing in letting him pass through to probationary status.

As for my own experiences with the police and crime: I’ve dealt with low grade police bullying when I was younger. I’ve also dealt with worse.

I was in a car accident. I got t-boned making a left turn by a car going WAY too fast. The officer that showed up at the scene of the accident happened to be a friend of the person driving the other car. One witness reported that the officer in question was grabbing me by the hair, jerking my head around and screaming at me, asking me why I tried to kill his friend. I was trapped in the car at the time, with a badly shattered leg, a broken back a bad laceration on my chin, et cetera. My brother was in the car too and banged up almost as badly. The woman driving the car that struck us had minor cuts and bruises.

I don’t talk about that much, because I don’t remember it. This was all reported by another witness at the scene of the accident, who had been two cars behind me. She stopped to offer assistance. She was the wife of a state trooper and greatly offended by what she had seen. She offered to testify if we pressed charges.

Later, at the hospital, the sheriff’s deputy in question kept interfering with doctors. He was insistent that he should arrest “that son of a bitch who tried to kill my friend”. He kept grabbing charts out of the hands of nurses and doctors until the doctors had hospital security escort him from the building. I don’t remember this, either. This was reported to me by a friend of the family, the mother of my best friend.

Ultimately we didn’t pursue it. My brother and I were too banged up to care, and I didn’t remember a thing about it. My mother was recovering from her own coma, and before long we discovered dad had cancer, which turned out to be terminal. 1988 was not a good year. Worrying about that didn’t seem like a big deal at the time. What’s another asshole cop with a Napoleon complex?

That was one experience. Another was after my mother’s home was invaded in 2008. An eyewitness ID’ed two of the home invaders. With that knowledge, the Sheriff’s Department still couldn’t manage to make an arrest. I’ve written about that before and don’t feel compelled to do so again.

My own home was burglarized a couple of months before my mom’s home got invaded. The cops made a bigger mess in the house than the thieves had. They didn’t discover anything useful then either.

So far in my life, I have had pretty much no positive interactions with the police. They’ve been more a harassing presence than one that maintains law and order. They’ve been useless at preventing crime, and they’ve been useless at mitigating crimes that have taken place.

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Oh, and I forgot the funniest thing these professionals have done! The day my father died we had to call the police to do a cursory investigation. As they were leaving, one of the officers (I can’t remember if this was the OPD or Sheriff’s office) looked at me and said “Have a nice day!” To his credit, he at least realized what he had said and winced before fleeing the scene.

Anyway, I don’t really recall any positive experiences with the police.

Reynolds is convinced the LAPD are acting with extreme professionalism. If that’s the case, why did they shoot up two pick-up trucks without warning and without determining that the pick-up trucks contained actual, you know, threats? Not very professional.

Reynolds, sure a lot of stuff is personal to me. But we’re also between three and four million jobs SHORT of where we were in December of 2007, when the recession officially started. (I’m not sure how short at the moment, because I didn’t bother looking at the last BLS report. After the December report we were around 3,947,000 jobs short.)

Over five years after the start of the recession, and we’re still far short of where we were then. We’ve been in a recovery for over three and a half years. And we still haven’t hit the old level of employment. And a lot of the jobs that have been added in the meantime have been part-time. And we have a larger working age population.

My situation is personal. But we’re far short of where we were for millions of others too. I work with some of them too, and I think of them. The other day I commented on another thread about a study showing that half of the Millennials with jobs only have part-time work, even though many of them have college degrees. I worry about that because it is the destruction of young potential.

Yeah, I take a lot of it personally, but I worry about wide spread economic destruction, which destruction is supported by a bevy of stats.

You, on the other hand, are crowing about how wonderful things are because you just made a cool $300,000.

Look up the story of Ed Mason, former Orange County Commissioner to see how professional those Orange County Sheriff’s Deputies can be. Short version:

Ed Mason was a young up and comer in local politics. He got into a domestic dispute with his wife. The cops were called and took him to their HQ. They took away the pistol he had with him. They talked to him, decided he was okay, and let him go sans pistol. So he walked into the squad room, asked a deputy for the DEPUTY’S pistol, received it, went home and killed his wife.

The guys responsible for this travesty at the Sheriff’s office went on to bigger and better things, including Sheriff Lawson Lamar, who became the District Nine State’s Attorney for a LONG time. He just lost office last year. No one suffered any negative consequences from giving a violent man a police pistol. Well, except Diane Mason of course. Ed Mason served 33 MONTHS of a five year sentence. It pays to have connections.

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Another local case of note from more recent times would be the head of the Windermere PD helping cover up that one of his buddies was a child molester. The child molester finally got exposed, along with the corrupt Windermere PD, when one of the molested children turned out to have a parent with more clout than the molester.

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Sanford PD has had it’s own problems, and I don’t mean the Trayvon Marton/George Zimmerman case. I mean the case in which a police officer’s son was caught beating up some random homeless dude. Because of his connections he initially got off with no problem. But someone had taped the event and eventually it got out what had happened.

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I came of age in Florida during the years of the Cocaine Cowboys. Up here in Central Florida we got some blowback, but the worst was of course in South Florida. I think everyone has their favorite stories about corrupt police from back then. My favorite is about a class of Miami police cadets. Within about five years of graduation all of those cadets were either dead or in jail on corruption charges.

It was indeed a long time ago, and things may have changed. I spent 11 days in two jails, one rather downscale, one quite nice, aside from the fact that I was in there with a guy who’d killed a woman and cut off her fingers. Weirder still, he was a dead ringer for Paul Newman. He even had the voice.

I was decidedly not rich in those days, but was still more of a smart ass than was probably sensible. I made a joke to Paul Newman at one point about dessert. “Maybe they’ll serve ladyfingers.” Hah hah. It still amazes me no one killed me. But they were all distracted by trying to dig a hole through the cinderblocks with a piece of metal we’d pried off a bunk.

Ah, good times, good times.

On the receiving end my wife was pistol-whipped as part of a rape attempt. I was also held up at gunpoint while managing a 24 hour restaurant.

I was also attacked by a guy who wanted to kill me for being a smart-ass, (Imagine that!) but he fortunately rammed his arm through a piece of reinforced glass before I could stab him with a 14 inch chef’s knife I had concealed behind a door.

I also pulled a knife (well, a steak knife) on a violent customer once, in Oakland. Exact quote from Oakland cop: “You didn’t pull a knife, right? Because you can’t pull a knife on an unarmed man, even if he’s crazy. So you didn’t. Right?” No, officer, I certainly did not.

A couple incidents of getting between women and their attackers. Speeding tickets, reckless driving (just extra speeding, really.) No doubt some other stuff I’ve forgotten.

I’ve never in any of that had any beef with the cops. I would tell you if I had. They’ve always been professional to me, and none of those run-ins happened when I was well-to-do. Of course they all happened while I was white. And I’ve never been belligerent. When they pull me over for speeding I just say, “Yep, you got me.” And on my one felony arrest I was polite and uncooperative. No threats, no beat-down, and the separate cop who booked me into jail chatted with me about antiques of all things. I was tangentially in the business in those days and he wanted a Mission oak rolltop desk.

Incidentally, no hassles with the jail population, though I’m sure that would have changed if I’d gone to the joint. I was young and blond.

Reynolds is convinced the LAPD are acting with extreme professionalism.

Yeah, which is why I wrote:

Does LAPD have a long record of brutality and incompetence? Yes. Since forever. Since at least the 30′s.

You wrote:

Reynolds, sure a lot of stuff is personal to me. But we’re also between three and four million jobs SHORT of where we were in December of 2007, when the recession officially started.

It’s personal to me, too. You think poor and scared and desperate was something that happened to me a long time ago? It was, chronologically. And time takes some of the edge off it. But I still remember sleeping under a freeway overpass. And I remember sitting at a pay phone (back before cells) being eaten by mosquitoes hour after hour hoping someone would call me back on an application for some piece of shit job. I remember walking the length of Ocean City, Maryland carrying my shoes because they hurt too much to wear and I couldn’t afford 60 cents for the bus as I went from restaurant to restaurant looking for a job. I remember apartments that smelled of vomit and baby diapers. I remember roaches. I remember all the tricks for avoiding bill collectors. (Oh, Reynolds? Yeah, I think he’s out of the country.)

I’m not Drew. I grew up in trailer parks on bayous in the panhandle of Florida when my dad was an E4. Remember: I’m the guy here without the college degree, or the high school diploma. The one place where you’ve got me beat in the poverty drama is that you’re unemployed with a kid. I avoided that by having kids late in life. I think that must be a stab in the guts. That’s a special kind of scared.

There must be some heat coming down on Charlie Beck for him to take this step, after already saying he had looked over the case and felt it was mitigated properly.

Also, in this same LAT piece, apparently Dorner’s truck had a broken axle, and weapons were found inside. So, any speculation that he was clever enough to have planted the burned truck as a ploy, was probably way wrong… and the disabled truck probably disabled some of Dorner’s plans as well, if he wasn’t able to tote all his guns along with him.

Wait, am I a preening narcissist or a scared parent worried about my child’s fate? It’s hard to keep it straight.

The fact is they behaved very professionally in all situations.

So are you claiming the cops are pros, or that they’re not pros? At the moment the LAPD seems to be more a danger to the general public than is Dorner. A 71 year-old Hispanic grandmother looks so much like a hulking black man that they need to put two bullets in her back just to be safe? Good stuff!

In my view police are neither better nor worse than the rest of us, if the rest of us carried guns and had the chore of arresting people for a variety of infractions, large and small.

I do have one amusing story. I was driving at a prudent and legal speed along a street not far from my office at the time. A car passed me at high speed. Shortly thereafter a police car at the side of the road put on its flashers and pulled me over. The officer, late 50s or early 60s, gave me a ticket for speeding which I emphatically wasn’t doing. I just meekly accepted the ticket.

I came back the next day to the same place that the police car had been sitting. In the car was the same officer, sound asleep.

I appeared on my court date, dressed in a three-piece suit, and explained to the judge what had happened. The police officer had not appeared and the charge was dismissed.

I might add that my experience with police officers in social situations, especially social situations that are mostly police officers, is that most officers divide the world into two brackets: us (police officers) and them (criminals or potential criminals).

I think that abuse of power goes with the job of being a police officer. It’s inevitable. In most cases on most days police are as Michael has described them. But there are some cases on some days that are different. And some officers that are different.

Wait, am I a preening narcissist or a scared parent worried about my child’s fate? It’s hard to keep it straight.

Because narcissists don’t also have feelings? Of course they do. So it’s not either/or. It could be both of the above. Maybe this will surprise you, but people are not numbers. They are complicated. Even out and out psychopaths (no, Mr. Misread, I’m not calling you a psychopath) may have genuine feelings. No one ever in all of history has had just a single motive.

So are you claiming the cops are pros, or that they’re not pros? At the moment the LAPD seems to be more a danger to the general public than is Dorner. A 71 year-old Hispanic grandmother looks so much like a hulking black man that they need to put two bullets in her back just to be safe? Good stuff!

You are aware now, since I reminded you, that I agreed LAPD had a bad reputation. That fact notwithstanding, on occasions when I’ve had dealings with cops – not LAPD, incidentally – I was well-treated. Do you see inconsistency there? It can be true that generally service sucks at Best Buy, and true that Best Buy is going down the tubes, and yet be true that when I’ve been to Best Buy I was well-treated.

I’d guess more generally that most people go their entire lives without having a bad experience with a cop — if they’re white. But hey, let’s not bring that up because you don’t think racism exists, right?

It’s the kind of job, though, that lends a person status, power and legitimate authority to ‘call the shots’ over other human beings. If such a person is honest, capable and genuinely has the interest of others at heart, then they probably serve an individual’s interest well. But, if they consider the power given them as a shield from self-accountability, explanations, decent actions, then lots can go askew.

Police officers are one such group. Actually, most first responders are out and front and become leaders and authority figures in times of crisis — firemen, medical personal (especially doctors). For instance, how many people go to doctors and passively accept treatments, without asking a question?

Government officials are another group. This is especially true now with central government getting bigger and bigger, and bent on controlling more and more elements of a person’s life. When such power incrementally gets larger over time, people shift over to being more compliant and accepting of higher-up dominance. Such a shift, IMO, tends to produce a aura of invincibility in some, opening the door to less transparency and oversight at the top, cover-ups, and more abuses at the bottom.

I think examples, in current day government, are the subtle and somewhat secret expansion of the drone program, recently called out loosely by a lib (Tina Brown) saying, “this might be cause for impeachment if it had happened under Bush.” Another glaring one is the Benghazi muddle — where there appears to be so much obfuscation, delay, lies, contrary information, incorrect statements — and, no one at the top has been held accountable. What about the Bob Menendez travesty, lew’s Cayman Island holdings (when so much was made out of Romney’s), the reckless spending of green energy funds, many to Presidential donors and bundlers, at taxpayer’s expense, or the Guru of Global Warming and anti fossil fuel ex-VP getting rich off a sale to a dubious company from an oil-rich ME country?

Reynolds, you’ve been decrying the paranoia of those of us who don’t trust the police.

Turns out there is reason to not trust the cops. According to the LA Times, AT LEAST SEVEN police officers opened fire on the truck of Margie Carranza, 47, and her mother, Emma Hernandez, 71. Looking at a picture of the back of the truck I count over 30 bullet holes. On neighbor reports that five shots struck the front entrance of his house. Other witnesses claim over 50 shots were fired, but who can tell at this point? Depending on the weapons used (some reports state that the police have been carrying AR-15s for their guard duty), 50 shots could be well on the low end of the number of shots fired.

So does this count as police professionalism or not? They shot at two Hispanic women, instead of one six foot tall 270 pound black man, who were in the wrong make and model of vehicle that was also the wrong color. I can forgive them getting the color wrong because of nighttime, but they got the number of suspects wrong, the ethnicity wrong, the sex wrong, the height wrong , the weight wrong, the make of vehicle wrong and the model of vehicle wrong. Plus, the “dangerous suspects” were armed with newspapers not firearms. Plus all indications are that the police did NOT identify themselves, and their discharges put civilians (other than the two they were shooting at) in jeopardy. This reeks of the police having shoot to kill orders, as well as kill on sight orders.

That’s really no surprise, Ice. Anybody who knew anything about the healthcare system (including me) warned that there weren’t enough physicians for an expansion of services. It required ideological blinders not to believe that the first order of business, if you wanted to expand services, was a sharp increase in the number of billets in medical school, something the practice of medicine has been loth to do for a century. An increase in the number of GPs (as opposed to specialists) would have been nice, too.

Most middle-middle income and above do not have the same experience as many on the lower end, and it is mostly limited to large urban areas with a large amount of crime. There is a racial component, and a black/brown person will have a different experience from a white person.

There have been cases of police officers ordering a “hit” on police who complain to Internal Affairs. It seems inconceivable to many people, but it does happen.

Turns out there is reason to not trust the cops. According to the LA Times, AT LEAST SEVEN police officers opened fire on the truck of Margie Carranza, 47, and her mother, Emma Hernandez, 71. Looking at a picture of the back of the truck I count over 30 bullet holes. On neighbor reports that five shots struck the front entrance of his house. Other witnesses claim over 50 shots were fired, but who can tell at this point? Depending on the weapons used (some reports state that the police have been carrying AR-15s for their guard duty), 50 shots could be well on the low end of the number of shots fired.

And with that, no more Reynolds in this thread. That is extremely unprofessional behavior…it is dangerous behavior, extremely so to the general public. All officers involved should be suspended, criminal charges should be lodged, and the DA should be taking action. If convicted they should be fired.